


That Wet Dog Smell

by Poe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Allergies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Bucky dies offscreen, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, I don't know what Natasha is but I'm terrified of her, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, This is so dumb I can only apologise, Vampire Bucky Barnes, Werewolf Steve Rogers, anyway he's a vampire so he Got Better, it's discussed briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22810321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poe/pseuds/Poe
Summary: Steve's allergies are acting up.He was bitten in a fight last night.Bucky's hiding something.Everything's about to get a bit strange.(Also they're probably going to fall in love.)Or: Steve is a werewolf who's allergic to himself, the fic.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 36
Kudos: 179





	That Wet Dog Smell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [possibleplatypus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibleplatypus/gifts).



> I can only apologise.

“Uggg,” Steve snuffles, and sneezes again, wiping his nose on the back of his hand, all dignity long since abandoned. His arm throbs underneath the bandage, and he knows he needs to see a doctor, really, but he can’t stop sneezing long enough to achieve anything.

“You okay there, pal?” comes Bucky’s voice as he steps through the door, just home from the graveyard shift at the all-night café a few blocks away. He shucks off his coat and boots, before stretching his arms long above his head, clicking all the bones in his spine as he does so. He looks exhausted, as always, his eyes rimmed red and his face dreadfully pale, but Steve has asked him a thousand times and he says he’s fine, that graveyard suits him just swell, and the tips are good. It’s a look that does actually suit him, besides, but then, pretty much any look suits Bucky. Bucky is ridiculously good looking, not that Steve is going to tell him that any time soon. Being in love with your best friend is frankly embarrassing. And a disaster. And he should stop. His eyes trail the length of Bucky’s body as he moves. Steve looks away, very deliberately.

Bucky gets closer to Steve, as Steve launches into another bout of sneezes, and sort of – stops. And bristles. Steve doesn’t really notice until Bucky is statue still about a foot away from him, his nose crinkled like something just died under it.

“Could ask you, the same – ” another sneeze, “question. You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Steve says, wishing for the sweet release of death as his sinuses pulse heavy on either side of his nose.

“Ha, haha. No ghosts here, nope. But say, Stevie, you didn’t happen to get into a fight whilst I was gone last night, huh?”

Steve tries to glare, but his eyes are too watery and it mainly looks like he’s about to burst into tears. He can’t really see Bucky through the haze, but Bucky does seem to be looking at him funny. Like he can’t quite figure him out.

“No,” Steve lies. Bucky sighs. “Okay, but they were asking for it. One of them fuckin’ bit me. Weird, huh?”

“You should go to the doctor,” Bucky says, tone somewhat abrupt. “Rabies. You don’t want to get rabies.”

Steve shakes his head. Bucky is so overprotective.

“I’m not going to get rabies,” he argues.

“That’s what literally every person who ever got rabies thought, I’d wager,” Bucky says, something more like his old self again. “Hey, erm, maybe you could go to this free clinic I heard about? They – they, well they’re kinda different, better, I think. They know different things.”

“Are you high?” Steve blinks a couple of times to try look at Bucky, but nothing becomes clearer. And dammit, he sneezes again. Shit. “You’re not making a lot of sense there, Buck.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes things don’t,” Bucky says cryptically. “Do you want the address or do you want me to come with you?”

“Urgh,” Steve says, knowing Bucky won’t let him off until he’s had a rabies shot and probably a tetanus shot and probably had the damn sneezing looked at too. It’s just his allergies, but he can’t pinpoint what’s set them off. “Fine.”

And that’s pretty much how Steve finds himself stuffed into an Uber (“I can get the bus, Buck.” “Shut up, your face is leaking.”) and on his way to The Romanoff Family Clinic about a half hour away.

When he walks in, Bucky walking protectively beside him, the air feels – weird. Heavy. Almost like he can see it. Even though his nose is blocked, he can smell a mix of floral scents and other more earthy, _old_ smells. He looks at Bucky, who shrugs.

“Trust me,” he says, and guides Steve to the counter, taking a form to fill in for him, seeing as Steve can barely hold a pen right now.

They don’t seem to have to wait any time at all before Steve’s called through, and slightly nervous, he grabs at Bucky’s wrist, not really thinking the action through, just wanting some comfort. He doesn’t like hospitals, even weird small oddly fragrant ones.

They walk into a large, airy office where a woman with violently red hair greets them. She’s arguably one of the most beautiful women Steve’s ever met, but every aspect of her seems to scream DANGER in big letters as red as her hair.

“Nice to see you, James,” she says, and Bucky resolutely does not look at Steve. Has Bucky been here before? Why? Is Bucky sick? “Now, who is this? Steven Grant Rogers, suspected – ah, I see. Well. It’s nice to meet you, Steven.”

She doesn’t extend a hand to greet him, and he’s kind of grateful because he’s snotty and gross and also more than a little scared of her.

“Steve,” he snuffles, and sneezes again. Bucky grabs a tissue from the box on the desk and shoves it at Steve. “Steve is fine.”

“Steve is not fine,” Bucky says in an undertone, and Steve chuckles despite himself.

“Now, Steve, it says here you were bitten last night? By a person?” The doctor, Steve hasn’t caught her name, asks. He nods.

“And you’ve been sneezing ever since? Any inflammation of the wound? Itching? Can I take a look?”

Steve isn’t sure whether to nod or shake his head, so he just sort of extends his wrist, and Bucky kind of – looks away when Steve takes off the bandage, revealing a set of teeth marks embedded deep into his skin, strangely absent of any blood or bruising. The doctor takes his hand gently, rotating his arm carefully and looking closely at the wound.

“Yes, well, I suspect, hmm. Steve, how familiar are you with the supernatural?”

Steve blinks. Then sneezes.

“The TV show?” He asks thickly.

“No, not the television show. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, magic, that kind of thing.”

“Erm – ” Steve looks at Bucky to see if this is all some kind of weird joke, but Bucky’s face is weirdly stoic and blank, like how it goes when he’s keeping a really big fucking secret from Steve.

It’s not the face of someone playing an elaborate practical joke. It looks quite a bit graver than that.

“I’m not?” Steve finishes. “It’s – not real?”

“Steve, are you allergic to any animals?” The doctor asks.

“Dogs,” Bucky says, before Steve can. “Always has been.”

Steve’s lost. He doesn’t see the connection.

“There you go then,” the doctor says, as though everything should be crystal clear. “Now, normally I wouldn’t disclose anything so personal about a patient with someone else in the room, so if you’d like James to leave – ”

Bucky makes to stand, but Steve grabs for his wrist again, meeting cold skin.

“No, he can stay. Just tell me. What’s going on?”

“You’re a werewolf, Steve. You’re having an allergic reaction to yourself,” the doctor says gently, “it should calm down within a couple of days, and in the meantime I can give you an anti-histamine shot, as well as your rabies and tetanus shots, and of course I have several pamphlets on how to manage your condition – ”

“Sorry, excuse me, what the – what on earth?” Steve blurts out. Werewolf? Nope, that’s not a thing.

“I’m a vampire!” Bucky stops Steve’s thoughts short. “I have been for six months now.”

“No you’re not,” Steve says, side tracked, “you go out in the sun.”

“It’s February. In Brooklyn. That doesn’t count. I won’t be able to go out in the summer. Or for prolonged periods of time. Look, it’s complicated.”

“Of course, the lore,” Steve says sarcastically. “I imagine you crave the blood of man too.”

“Steve,” the doctor says, and her voice is somehow terrifying enough to make him sit up straight and shut up. “James isn’t lying. And neither am I. This is all far more real than you might realise.”

“Right, so I’m just – going to turn into a great big wolf every month and tear people apart? Because that’s a thing that happens,” Steve rolls his eyes.

“Actually werewolves have a great deal of control over their actions, and have been deeply misrepresented by the media,” the doctor explains patiently. “You’ll probably find you crave red meat a little more around the full moon, but I’ve helped vegan werewolves make reasonable adjustments. Will that be something you’ll be needing?”

“And Bucky – sorry, but no. He doesn’t go around biting people.”

“I get my blood from here,” Bucky grinds out, and maybe his teeth are a little whiter, a little sharper these days. “People donate it. I don’t bite people.”

“Right, vegan werewolves and people donating blood to vampires. Okay, sure. I have to go,” Steve tries to leave, but the doctor stares him down, and he feels it in his very soul. He sits a little deeper in the chair.

“I have dedicated entire lifetimes to treating people in your situation, or similar, and I will not have my calling mocked,” she says calmly, but with that subtle hint of violence.

Steve very much wants to curl up and say ‘okay, sorry’ in a small voice, but he’s always been too big for his body, so he just sort of pouts a little.

“If you could just give him the shots, Nat, I’ll take him home. He’ll calm down. I’ll bring him back when he’s seeing sense,” Bucky says evenly, and doesn’t Steve just bristle at that.

But he still rolls his sleeve up and gets the shots, and the anti-histamine works its magic, and by the time the doctor is ushering them to the door, Bucky’s hand on the small of Steve’s back, he’s already stopped sneezing.

He waits in the corridor as Bucky and the doctor – Nat – exchange a few private words, staring down at his rebandaged wrist and wondering if this is all a weird fever dream.

Bucky drops by the front desk, leaves a donation, and then he’s calling another Uber to take them home. Almost like he doesn’t want to walk home in the daylight or something.

The anti-histamines are making Steve drowsy, so despite his best efforts, he finds himself slumping into Bucky in the Uber, and then being led child-like up the steps to their apartment, thankful that it’s on the first floor.

Bucky lowers him onto the couch, and gets him some water. Steve can breathe through his nose now, and he can smell – everything. It’s ridiculous. It seems everything has a scent to it. And Bucky – Bucky smells weird. Wrong, somehow. Not a bad wrong, but like he doesn’t quite fit into the world.

“You’re a vampire,” Steve says, as Bucky sets the water on the coffee table.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and huffs out a small laugh. “It’s ridiculous.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Steve says, more hurt than anything. “You could have told me.”

“Yeah, that worked out really well back there,” Bucky points out.

“Six months, Buck, you could have said it.”

“Yeah, well, some things take time. It’s not like it’s the only thing I haven’t told you,” Bucky rolls his eyes, and Steve tries to sit up a little straighter, kicking the coffee table as he does so, water splashing from the glass onto the stained wooden surface.

“Like what?” Steve narrows his eyes.

Bucky bites at his bottom lip, the little furrow between his eyebrows appearing on otherwise smooth skin.

“Nothing, it doesn’t matter.”

“Liar,” Steve says, “you’re going all crinkly, right here,” he presses a finger to the divot, and Bucky inches back from it, leaving Steve’s finger extended in thin air.

“I can’t tell you, you wouldn’t understand.”

Steve shakes his head.

“What, like, you’re in love with me or something? Don’t be daft, Buck,” he says, then catches the look on Bucky’s face. He’s never seen him look like he’s been torn apart before, his features blown wide open and exposed. “Oh. Shit.”

“It’s nothing,” Bucky says, and starts to stand, but Steve grabs at him, pulling him back down to eye level.

“It’s not nothing. Also, same.”

Steve can feel himself blushing as Bucky stares at him, wide eyed, and realises that he hasn’t seen any colour in Bucky’s skin for a long time now, apart from those tired red-rimmed eyes.

“Same? How – ”

“I love you, Buck. Have done for – way too long, but I couldn’t tell you because you seemed to have other stuff going on, and it turns out you totally did, and I get it now, okay, vampire shit, fair enough, but I love you and I was going to tell you and – mmf – ”

Steve’s rambling is cut off by Bucky’s lips on his, cold, but not unpleasantly so. The angle is awkward, but considering, it could be worse. Bucky grins against him, and Steve smiles back.

Steve pulls back.

“This should be weirder, considering,” he says.

“It’s pretty weird. You smell different. It’s you, but amplified. And kinda – doggy.”

“Rude. That’s the only weird thing?” Steve asks.

“Well, there is one other weird thing,” Bucky muses, leaning in close, and Steve can see he’s not even breathing, and how did Steve not notice this sooner? Idiot. He’d spent so much time trying not to stare at Bucky that he’d managed to ignore him literally dying.

“What’s weird?” Steve asks, breathing for the two of them.

“The weird thing is that you could be kissing me right now, and you’re not,” Bucky says, and Steve smiles wider, and sorts that right out.

*

There’ll be discussions, about immortality that’ll make Steve want to cry, about the night Bucky died and Steve didn’t notice (Steve had been visiting a friend in DC, Bucky had stayed up for three days crying when he realised he didn’t have a heartbeat anymore), about how Bucky found Nat’s clinic, about life and death and everything inbetween, but in the end, they’ll still be Steve and Bucky, the same but different, different but the same, and maybe in this version of reality this is the hand they’ve been dealt, but you know something? If you asked them, snuggled up on the couch together watching Netflix and exchanging soft kisses that soon turn hungry, they wouldn’t change it for the world.

(Bucky does get sort of annoyed when Steve sheds on the couch, and Steve doesn’t really like to kiss Bucky when he’s had a drink, but hey, that’s what pet-friendly vacuums and toothpaste, respectively, are for, so it’s all okay, really.)

**Author's Note:**

> This was so dumb, I am so sorry. I've had a weird few days and just wanted to write something and this was the result. 
> 
> This was written as a result of a prompt by possibleplatypus, it's probably not what you were expecting, but I hope you like it. :)
> 
> My tumblr is jbbarnes.tumblr.com, my Instagram and Twitter are both @smallreprieves. 
> 
> Kudos and comments are awesome, and give me the validation I need to maintain my immortality. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. It's 2.45am, I'm going to bed. xx


End file.
